An Alliance captain on her fifth tour of the Terminus Systems once said that seeing a Kishock was the easiest way to tell if she was being attacked by batarian mercenaries or slavers, since "no bastard with a Kishock means to take you alive." This powerful sniper rifle fires a harpoon-like spike that causes massive internal bleeding, and its miniaturized disruptors will also destroy synthetics. The rifle’s biggest drawback is that it must be reloaded after every shot, but for those with steady aim and good timing, one shot is enough.

This weapon can be charged similar to the Graal Spike Thrower or the Geth Plasma Shotgun, though it only deals 175% base damage on a full charge. The resulting projectile appears to possess significantly more kinetic energy, knocking light enemies far into the air upon impact. Whilst there is no visual increase in the speed of the harpoon (it takes just as long to travel to an enemy as an uncharged shot does), the energy on impact is much greater.

The Kishock deals 60% of its stated damage on impact. The remaining 40% is dealt over the next 5 seconds, representing the bleed damage. However, damage bonuses from powers (with the exception of sniper-specific infiltrator bonuses) and mods only increase the impact damage.

As a result, any enemy reduced to two boxes of health with the first shot can usually be left alone if not an immediate threat, as they are likely to die from the bleed.

The bleed damage will not be increased by scoring a headshot. To offset that, the Kishock deals an extra 50% damage on a headshot (for a total of triple rather than 2.5x damage). The end result is that a headshot deals 1.8x the weapon's stated damage on impact, 2.2x after bleed, comparable to any other sniper rifle.

Despite being a single-shot sniper rifle, the weapon has a relatively fast reload speed: less than half the time needed to reload weapons like the Widow or Javelin.

The combination of rapid reload, lengthy charge time and only 175% charged damage means that, if ammunition conservation and precise aim are not a concern (for example, shooting at an Atlas whose attention is elsewhere), you will deal more damage by repeatedly firing off uncharged shots, rather than waiting for them to charge.

The Kishock's projectiles cannot penetrate cover, even if equipped with ammunition or mods that would normally allow it. However, they can naturally penetrate armor plating, including Guardian shields.

The projectile fired by the Kishock takes time to reach its target. Moving targets are difficult to hit unless an adjustment is made to lead the target. The projectile seems to travel significantly faster in multiplayer than singleplayer.

The projectile will suffer from the effects of gravity when fired. Charging the shot will decrease the effect, with no visible drop being produced when fired fully-charged.

The projectile also exhibits some random lateral movement (usually confined to within the box marked by the 5 squares in the scope), the combination of this fact and the one above makes going for headshots a difficult and somewhat risky tactic.

The rifle has a unique scope of very low magnification. This makes long ranged shots more difficult, but short-ranged shots easier than other single shot snipers.

The Kishock is the only sniper rifle that does not receive a damage penalty when fired from the hip.

As with any charged weapon, the Kishock cannot be charged while in cover. It is recommended to either only fire uncharged shots out of cover, or to stay standing and move out from behind obstacles to fire.

A way to account for the projectile speed is to use a power like Overload or Stasis to paralyze the target and get a shot.

Due to the Kishock's low thermal clip capacity, you may want to consider using the Spare Thermal Clip mod. Having said that, the Kishock has more spare ammo than most or all single shot weapons of this much power.

The damage of a fully charged shot (inclusive of DoT) rivals even the Javelin.

The Kishock has had multiple damage increases as well as changes to bleed damage: as of the latest patch, it inflicts an extra 40% damage instead of 20%, as well as bleed damage over a period of 5 seconds instead of 10 seconds. The damage spread out over those seconds is much higher due to the halving of the DoT duration.